


Airborn

by Ypofero_Faraday



Series: Airborn [1]
Category: Transformers (Bay Movies), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-16
Updated: 2020-11-12
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:14:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26502715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ypofero_Faraday/pseuds/Ypofero_Faraday
Summary: Capt. Charlotte Joanne Victory, USAF (retired), (32 yr)Education: Georgia Institute of Technology, bachelors’ in avionics engineeringMarital Status: Divorced"Bastard killed my wingman. I'm going to kill him. Simple as that.""It's... not quite that simple," Lennox looked to the truck sitting innocently off to his left.
Series: Airborn [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2012506
Comments: 19
Kudos: 41





	1. 01_prologue

_Alarms shrieked, the trilling sounds ingrained in every pilot’s head that meant every kind of failure imaginable. The air sizzled with heat inside the cramped cockpit, seeping through even the specialized material of the pilot’s ATAG Suit. The world both inside and out spiraled, blurring into a dizzying array of fire and cityscape, and Charlotte yelled in protest as she fought for control. The internal HUD of her helmet had gone dark, leaving her with the chaotic flashing of the on-board LCD panel, but it wasn’t telling her anything she didn’t know._

_Engine failure, but there were two engines and redundant systems, so the first blow to the left wing wasn’t detrimental. The fire had been suppressed, power to the left wing cut, and Charlotte had been able to regain control._

_The aileron seizing up hadn’t been fun, but it also hadn’t been anything Charlotte wasn’t experienced working around._

_Flying through narrow, winding spaces was a thrill few pilots got to chance. Getting shot through the tail by a giant robot… that was a first. And, Charlotte was finding, very much detrimental to the lifespan of a jet._

_The view outside blurred into the watercolor painting of trees flashing past a high speed vehicle. An ambulance, to be precise. Charlotte was laying down, an IV in her arm._

_“You’ll be alright.”_

_Something had happened. Something terrible and sickening and completely, unacceptably, unforeseeable had happened._

_Someone held her hand, but faces were as blurred at the view out the window. She had a hand on her stomach, as though that was important. She was back in her plane, but this time, her hand fell on the distension of her belly._

_“RIGGS!” Charlotte screamed when another jet careened past her nose in fiery pieces._

_Pain lanced through her stomach, and she was on a hospital bed. She was back on a familiar hospital bed._

_“-losing it,” a voice faded in and out of focus._

_“You’ll be alright.”_

_There was glass in her stomach, but that wasn’t right._

_But it was. She was in a fire fight. She crashed. Of course there was glass._

_But no… there hadn’t been glass when-_

_Everyone was gone, and she was alone in the hospital room. Jets screamed outside her window in flaming pieces. One by one, they crashed, shot out of the sky until only one remained. It fluttered out of view like a leaf caught in a hurricane._

_Wind howled._

_Her stomach ached, but it felt hollow._

_None of this was right._

_Nothing was alright._

_Outside, the last jet crashed._

.

Charlotte bolted out of bed with a gurgling scream. She recognized instantly the horrid taste in her mouth and the images burning behind her eyelids, and she threw herself over the edge of her bed half a second before bile bubbled up from her stomach.

It burned coming back up almost as much as it had going down, which is to say; not enough.

Her head pounded and her stomach churned, but none of it could distract from the thundering pace of her heart and the phantom tear of metal through skin. _Fire flared over her skin, and sirens wailed- hospital alarms blared- Glass and metal crumbled, overwhelmed by the collision and weight of the plane- despair_.

She smashed a fist into the wall beside her.

.

“Captain Jones?”

“Not anymore,” Charlotte snapped and moved to slam the door.

A military grade boot wedged its way into the door frame.

“We’re here on unofficial government business,” the second man said. He had less tact, and Charlotte appreciated it if only for the fact that he’d likely be more responsive to her own crass objections. “Mrs. Jones-”

“It’s not Mrs.,” Charlotte opened the door again so she could glare properly at the two military men, “it’s not Jones, and I don’t want to talk.”

“Please, if you’ll just give us a minute to explain-” the first man, the African American, was trying platitudes again. He was cut off by a sharp elbow jab from his curt partner.

“It’s about Mission City.”

Charlotte froze, jaw clenching and fingers tightening on the door handle. The two casually dressed military men trying to pass as civilians suddenly seemed much more interesting, and she wanted them off her doorstep about a hundred times more.

Part of her, at least.

The other part of her, the part that still felt something other than depression and the urge to burn, needed to know if these men knew what they were referring to. If there was even a chance that they knew anything… well, curiosity killed her 8 times before. What was once more.

“What about it?” she narrowed her gaze. They shuffled in place, glancing around before the African shrugged and the Caucasian set his jaw again.

“Can we come it?”

Charlotte inspected them for another few seconds, but in the end, there was no decision to be made. She opened the door and stepped aside.

.

“Coffee? Beer?” Charlotte offered and tipped the creamer carton towards her nose. It wasn’t acrid, and she poured some in the black sludge that came out of her coffee machine.

“It’s 10 in the morning.”

“And?” she countered, measuring a cap full of rum and dumping it in her brew.

“Jones-”

“Victory,” Charlotte snapped, glare leveled across the kitchen counter. “Call me Jones one more time, and you can forget about this little chat.”

“Ah,” the man who introduced himself as Lennox tried for something akin to discretion. He looked to his partner in his uncertainty. “And this happened… recently?”

“Finalized last week,” she toasted with her coffee cup. “Bastard couldn’t handle staying in the shadow of my magnificence.”

“You came home a war-hero,” Lennox offered as if it meant something.

Charlotte snorted and drank until her headache ebbed. “They don’t hand out metals for fighting a war that didn’t happen.”

And the government officials she had spoken to in the wake of Mission City had made that, if nothing else, clear. Nothing had happened. No one had died.

Except Charlotte was the only one from her team of a dozen to walk away that day.

“Cut to the chase,” she snapped and slammed her coffee mug onto the counter beside the sink. The plant on the windowsill above it was dead.

The men were silent for a minute. Charlotte plucked a shriveled, yellow leaf and let it flake away between her fingers.

“We represent a special forces unit for a secret branch of the military,” Lennox started. “We look for people, usually military or ex, that possess unique qualities that would be of use to our cause.”

Charlotte didn’t turn. “If you’re going to speak in riddles and half-truths, you can leave. The only thing I want to know is if you know what happened to my wingman.”

“Riggs.”

With one name, everything rushed in. The world sharpened. The remains of the dead leaf fell into the sink.

“Yes.”

“We have answers,” Epps took charge of the conversation. “Most of it ain’t easy. And we can’t tell you much of anything until you sign a shit-ton of NDAs, but I swear, we got answers.”

Charlotte looked out the kitchen window at a dead lawn. Weeds sprouted between cracks in her sidewalk. The stairs to the porch were broken, one missing entirely. She didn’t need to look behind her to know the decay had spread into the house as well. Everything Charlotte owned could fit into a duffel bag and a backpack.

She was ready to go in 5 minutes. Lennox helped her into the back seat of a black, non-military truck, and they were gone.


	2. 02 Welcome to the shit show

“So, how much of Mission City do you remember?”

As soon as they were on the Hercules, NDAs signed and passed off and promptly forgotten about, Lennox got straight to business. Charlotte slouched as far as the harness allowed her and refused to let her leg bounce.

She hadn’t allowed herself time to doubt her decision, but she was beginning to realize that this new mission might dredge up more old memories than she was prepared to deal with.

“We were called out for recon around noon,” she started, focusing on a patch of rust near her feet instead of the past even as she spoke. “Me and my wingman along with the rest of our squad. We were getting hailed by a ground team – Army, I think – but getting all kinds of interference. We started the recon with 12 planes in the air.”

Her jaw clenched.

“Then there were 13.”

_‘Roman to Victory; we got a bogie on our 8 not showing up on radar.’_

_‘Sampson to Victory; ground team has stopped responding.’_

_‘All units, keep a tight-HOLY SHIT! WHAT IS-AAAAaaghfffffzzzzzzzz…’_

_‘Sampson down!’_

_‘Hostile! Hostile!’_

_‘Evasive- Roman, MOVE!’_

“In the span of 2 minutes, 10 of my men were downed.”

‘ _Who’s left?! Respond, damn it, respond!’_

_‘Charlotte,’_ _Riggs voice quivered. It sent ice shooting down her spine. ‘There’s something-ffffzzzzzz…’_

_‘Riggs?’ Charlotte’s heart leapt into her throat and she pulled a sharp 360 in search of her wingman. The sky burned, and the other F-22 plummeted to the ground. ‘Riggs! RIGGS!’_

Charlotte hissed a breath in through her nose and refocused on the rust and the thrum of heavier engines of the cargo plane around her.

“I still don’t know what it was. I’ve seen a lot of cutting-edge shit, tested a lot of it – prototypes and the likes – and I’ve never seen anything like _that_. They told us it was rogue tech.”

_The silhouette of a person… but like no person Charlotte had ever seen before…_

Charlotte shook her head and glowered at memories.

“Nothing ‘rogue’ about that thing; it knew exactly what it was doing.”

Lennox and Epps didn’t respond except to exchange a sober look. Epps shrugged and nodded his partner on.

“I don’t want apologies or cover stories,” Charlotte emphasized before the other man could speak. “If I’m not getting the truth, I’m out. I want to know exactly what happened in Mission City and why. I want to know everything you do. And I want to know what killed my wingman, along with who, exactly, is to blame for it.”

Lennox nodded. “Let me explain.”

.

And, fuck, was it one hell of an explanation.

The flight was 19 hours. It took 4 hours to explain the existence of aliens and the particulars of the aliens that had come to Earth.

“So to sum things up; the alien war machine you met in Mission City was a Decepticon. Decepticons are one militant-political faction of the Cybertronian race; the other major faction is the Autobots.”

Charlotte snorted.

“Yeah, yeah, straight out of an 80’s Saturday-morning cartoon. You won’t be laughing in a minute.”

There was another hour of clarifications and questions and dodgy answers.

“Decepticons are the bad guys, and the Autobots are, for all our intents and purposes, the Good Guys.”

“Capital G’s all around,” Epps added.

It took 2 hours to explain how the United States military had gotten embroiled in their conflict and how that all led up to the creation and expansion of NEST.

“Mission City was only the first conflict, and we realized pretty quickly that if there were going to be more, which we also realized was almost certain, we were going to need allies that could actually stand up to these bastards. So…” Lennox trailed off and opened the folder on the table between them to a crisp photo.

Charlotte sucked in a breath, heart racing with the addictive tang of adrenaline. And for once, it wasn’t induced by the burn of 90 proof.

“That’s a start.”

There were introductions, of a sort.

“Optimus Prime,” Lennox pointed at the largest of the aliens, mechs, whatever. “He’s the leader of the Autobots and, uh…”

“Space Pope,” Epps supplied. “He’s got some mystical relic in his chest that lets him talk to old gods of Cybertron. It gets real weird.”

Charlotte hummed and nodded as if everything made perfect sense.

There were several hours in there where Charlotte mused and paced and asked more questions and got some more dodgy answers.

“Can these things be killed?”

“Hell yeah,” Epps confirmed.

“Then I’m going to kill that one.”

She stared at the newest image, this mockery of a man, with more life in those glowing eyes and ferocity in that sharp grin than an alien robot had any right to have. He had no right to such life after all the death he had wrought.

“I’ll kill that one,” she repeated, pointing at the alien machine, the mech, designated Starscream.

No one questioned her.

Charlotte took a nap, drank some water, jittered and took some aspirin when the chills and headaches tried to set in again.

And now, 3 hours from their destination, the three of them were seated around the last half-dozen manila folders.

One was Charlotte’s.

“And now we’re to the fun part.” Lennox’s hand hovered over the other 5 folders.

“Like goliath alien death machines isn’t already fun?” Charlotte deadpanned at Epps.

Epps snorted.

“It might be best if O.P. explains this next part,” Epps addressed his partner. “You always get the details mixed up.”

“Wha- I do not!” Lennox recoiled with a splutter, rounding on the other man.

“Yeah? Unicorns?”

“Hey! That was one time; one time!”

“Spark-knock.”

The banter was nice, easy to drown out, familiar, and Charlotte, upon realizing that she would be waiting until they landed for any more information, settled back into her own thoughts.

She pondered everything for a time. Aliens hadn’t been at the bottom of her list of possibilities, but it had certainly been preceded by several other conspiracies. Part of her expected to wake up in a cold sweat on her couch with an empty bottle in her hand. This day had certainly felt like several of her fever dreams.

But even after another nap, Charlotte still woke up in the cargo plane. There were still two military men bickering like an old married couple. And there was still a stack of manila folders in front of her.

She picked up the picture still sitting on the little table in front of her.

It was a group shot. A dozen Army men, coated in dried blood and crusted soot, stood at lazy attention in front of a half dozen Cybertronians. The picture was centered on Lennox and Epps. The leader of the Autobots, the only name Charlotte bothered to remember beside the Bastard-Jet-Starscream’s, Optimus Prime, knelt behind and off to one side of the Army team. There was the black one, the yellow one, the red and white one that was clearly the medic, and a small silver one that looked like he was holding up his lower half with duct tape and prayers.

He was smiling.

Charlotte frowned.

It was strange seeing emotion on these robots’ faces. The sadistic glee on Starscream’s face had been one thing, almost expected, but this lazy joy was another thing entirely.

“That’s the OGs.”

Charlotte didn’t startle when Epps sat down beside her, but she couldn’t stop the flinch in time.

“Sorry.”

Charlotte set the photo back on top of the stack of folders. “This is some weird shit.”

“Weirdest shit I ever seen,” Epps agreed. “But once you get past the whole alien thing, they’re cool dudes. The list of people I’ve trusted as much as those guys there,” he pointed at the picture, “is short.”

“They’re expressive,” Charlotte said instead of responding to Epps’ previous statement, getting to her current thought-rut.

“They’re sentient,” Epps countered with a shrug. “Sapient, whatever. They got souls and shit, like people. Got more heart than some people, too. They ain’t machines, much as they look like it. They’re…”

Charlotte glanced up when he trailed off, but Epps was lost in his own thoughts now, gaze locked on the photo. She let him be. He’d gotten his point across.

They landed 20 minutes later, and sweltering tropical heat swept up the cargo ramp before it was even fully opened.

.

“We operate outside of any official military chain of command, so rules and rank tend to get a little jumbled,” Lennox explained as he led their small troupe across the tarmac. “It’s a constant game of ‘who outranks who?’ here, and we tend to say that if it’s not obvious then the title goes to the officer with the bigger balls.”

“Fantastic,” Charlotte shot him a sardonic grin.

So far, it looked like the average military base. Because of the tropical climate, most of the activity took place inside the hangars, doors thrown wide open in the hopes of a cross-breeze.

A few soldiers had set up a card table, playing with chips and soda instead of money. Another group was playing basketball in the meager shade between buildings, and as Charlotte watched, one of them squirreled the ball away from underneath his opponent’s arms before flinging it to a taller teammate.

They arrived at the main hangar to find a crowd of people milling about. There was a mix of casual uniforms and colorful civilian garb with the rare government suit walking stiffly passed those more properly dressed for the tropical climate.

“We haven’t had any emergencies in a few weeks; everyone’s enjoying the reprieve.”

“And your emergencies consist of killing Decrepitrons.”

“Decepticons; and not always. Despite our best efforts, Cybertronian technology still sometimes ends up in human possession. The ‘bots help us reclaim it and neutralize any domestic threats that might have come from it.”

“They’re kind of possessive of their tech,” Epps added.

“Probably for the best,” Charlotte muttered in agreement.

The atmosphere was more lax than she anticipated of a Super-Secret Government Organization, and she had yet to see the cause of that label.

“The big guys are waiting inside,” Epps gestured to a closed door leading deeper into the hangar. “You got any weapons on you?”

“You told me not to bring any.”

“Have to check anyway.”

Charlotte shucked her bags by a wall and allowed herself to be led deeper.

Lennox shouldered open a rare, human-sized door and led the way into a command room. Computers sat in tiered rows in semi-circles around a main bank of monitors. And that whole setup took up, approximately, a sixth of the room.

The rest of the room, while remaining very open, was dominated by a massive monitor and computer bank as well as a war table of impressive proportions.

And standing around said impressive war table, as though they weren’t the craziest things on the planet, were the Cybertronians. Optimus Prime stood at the head, muttering to his conversation partners. Two of the mechs Charlotte recognized from the ‘OG’ team photo, the silver one and the medic, as well as two others that were entirely unfamiliar.

Charlotte didn’t realize she’d stopped moving, stopped breathing too, until Epps nudged her forward with an elbow to her side. “O.P. don’t bite.”

Before she had a chance to compose herself, Optimus Prime looked up and turned his attention to the trio of humans. He offered something that looked like a smile and excused himself from the table. Thundering footsteps, no matter how carefully taken, shook the ground beneath Charlotte’s boots.

“Good afternoon, Colonel Lennox, Captain Epps,” Optimus greeted before turning his imposing attention on the third of their party.

Charlotte had rarely felt as small as she did at the center of the titan’s focus. Stature aside, he carried himself with the bearing of someone with more power than they cared to have, strength contained by willpower alone.

“Captain Charlotte Joanne Victory, USAF,” she greeted. Not knowing whether or not it was appropriate to salute, Charlotte settled for standing at attention.

“There is no need for formalities here, Captain,” the Space Pope, Prime, whatever, dismissed her with a slow wave of a massive hand.

Charlotte glanced at Lennox for assurance. He offered a lopsided grin and a shrug.

“This is the pilot I told you about,” Lennox offered as introduction as well.

The Prime’s smile went from civil to genuine in a beat, and Charlotte was flummoxed when it was cast at her.

“We have been anticipating your arrival,” the deep baritone resonated in her bones.

Uncertainty prickled at her arms, and Charlotte fought the urge to fidget. “I mean, you don’t exactly look short-staffed here.” She gestured around the bustling hangar.

“Ah,” Optimus turned to Lennox. “You have not explained the reason for her presence?”

“Epps thought I’d botch it.”

“He would have,” Epps countered.

An expression not dissimilar to an amused grin tugged at the corner of Optimus’ mouth for a fraction of a second before her returned his attention to Charlotte. “Then please, allow me to explain why I have requested someone of your specific expertise and quality. If you’ll follow me.”

Charlotte could do only that and reevaluated her initial assessment that this was reality. It kept taking odd turns toward the fantastical. But still, she followed; out the main hangar, back across the tarmac, behind a smaller hangar, over to another.

This one was larger, almost 5 stories tall, and the walls looked reinforced. Those things were only just noted before something else snagged Charlotte’s attention rather abruptly.

Several somethings, in fact.

“Get down!” a booming voice yelled from inside the hangar. Even grating and metallic as it was, the note of fear was evident. “Now, Fireflight! Down!”

Optimus hastened his pace, farcing the humans in his wake to run in order to keep up, and all four of them entered the hangar to a heckin’ _scene_.

Charlotte registered the large red mech in the middle of the hangar half a second before a small white blur barreled into him from the rafters. Both figures tumbled to the floor with a screech of metal and a shrill shriek of something that sounded much too childish for anything Charlotte had seen on the base previously.

“BEE! GRAB SLINGSHOT!”

The yellow mech stumbled forward in alarm, a wavering buzz erupting from him as he chased after another – small, Charlotte noted again – grey and orange blur across the hangar floor. It was a humorous sight, and completely out of place on a military base housing giant, robotic aliens.

The fleeing mini-mech chortled and skidded to a halt before darting back between his pursuer’s legs. Bumblebee overbalanced, and when a third blur appeared out of thin air, he stood no chance. He fell with a resounding clang that shook the ground beneath Charlotte’s boots.

“AIR RAID!”

Instinct screamed for her to duck for cover, and Charlotte only realized that the cry was a name when the red mini-mech hunkered down like a child caught in the act.

A fourth mech, this one not as small as the minis but not as big as any of the others, strode up to the cowering mini, arms crossed and another mini in his shadow.

Little Red glanced at the shadow and narrowed his eyes. “Traitor,” he hissed, and Shadow shuffled around to better hide behind his larger companion mech. Likewise, the little grey mech who had been Red’s accomplice tried to duck out of the way only to be snatched up by Bumblebee, who’d finally found his feet.

“Little terrors,” the large red mech stalked up with the tiniest robot Charlotte had seen yet flailing around in his arms.

“Go! Go! ‘anna a’go ‘epa, ‘Raid!” The little thing chattered away, half in what could only be an alien language. But even through the grinding and clicking, she recognized the cadence. And Charlotte jerked from in realization.

Children.

The little mechs were children.

“Captain.”

Lennox interrupted whatever train-wreck of a thought was trying to take over before it could gain much steam, and Charlotte gave him her attention.

“This is Ironhide, and these,” he gestured first to the large red mech then to the… kids, “are the Aerialbots.”

Charlotte couldn’t even find the name humorous in the backlash of the train she’d just yanked her thoughts off of.

She refocused. There were 5 of them that she could see.

The littlest one, tiny and white with rounded helm and stubby wings, was a third the size of the Bumblebee. By human ratios, the kids should be closer to 4 or 5 years old. But in action and speech, he acted like a kid in their terrible-twos, just cognizant enough to cause trouble and get his point across and not much more than that.

The tallest, and presumably the oldest, was actually a few feet taller than Bumblebee, so Charlotte couldn’t peg him. She wanted to say young adult based on the way he was so quick to take charge of the others when he’d first arrived, but he still seemed rather gangly and held himself with an uncertainty she’d only ever seen in adolescents. 

She supposed in the end it didn’t really matter how old they were, or seemed.

“They’re the… entirety of the Autobot’s aerial support… not including humans,” Lennox explained with a hesitance that Charlotte couldn’t pin the source of.

“They’re kids,” she countered. It seemed she was still hung up on that fact. “What are kids doing on a military base?”

“Not like there’s anywhere else for them to go,” Ironhide grunted, swinging the little white child-robot-thing by a foot. The kid didn’t seem to care, giggling and grappling with the red mech’s giant hand.

“Hey, we’re not kids!” the grey mini stepped forward, and Charlotte was reminded that they were still members of a giant race of aliens. The ‘kid’ still stood at 15 feet tall.

“Yeah!” the tiniest one chirped, utterly ridiculous from his upside-down position. 8 feet tall. “I’ma inato muh fu’u’grade!”

“Uhm, right,” Lennox commandeered the conversation again, rubbing the back of his neck and glancing around at the now gathered mechs. “Honestly, we don’t know what to do with them. None of the Autobots, on Earth at least, are flyers, and we don’t have the time or resources to spare to train them.”

Train them… but what could she possibly teach giant alien robots?

Her attention wandered over to the little mechs again, this time taking in their appearances. All cybertronians, she’d discovered quickly, retained some aspect of their vehicle mode when they were… standing, transformed, whatever. And despite the odd body ratios and alien physiology, these little mechs very clearly had wings.

Everyone else she’d met turned into cars or trucks. There was one boombox and the odd microscope-dude she’d seen in the files on the plane ride over. But these little guys…

Maybe it was the shock of everything that had been revealed to her in the last 24 hours. Maybe it was the jetlag setting in. Maybe it was that other something that she’d refused to acknowledge in years. Regardless, Charlotte looked upon these aliens, small beside their titanic counterparts, and her chest constricted in completely unacceptable ways.

“I…” she started, only for her thoughts to grind to a halt once more when suddenly she was the center of attention.

One of the little mechs, the one that had given Bumblebee the runaround, stepped forward with an uncoordinated skip. “My name’s Skydive! What’s yours? Ironhide said we were gonna get a new teacher. Are you our new teacher? I didn’t know humans knew how to fly. Do you have wings? Where do you hide them? Why-”

“Skydive, that’s enough,” the oldest of the five scolded.

Charlotte became privy to a lot of things lately. But in terms of straight up crazy, this took the cake.

“Hey, hey! Does this mean we can go flying now? Since we have a commander?”

“No, Slingshot. There’s a lot to-”

“Aaaw! But I want to fly!”

“You went out this morning.”

“He what?”

“Air Raid’s lying!”

“I am not! You snuck out after-”

“Air Raid!”

“Slingshot!”

Charlotte swiped a hand over her mouth and tugged on her chin.

Names flew by in a flurry, and Charlotte didn’t bother trying to keep track of who was who as soon as they started brawling. The oldest separated, holding the apparent troublemaker back from taking a swing at the snitch. The remaining two, the last still in Ironhide’s arms, darted around their elder’s legs.

Charlotte couldn’t focus. Or perhaps she was too focused, her mind too clear to handle what was happening. She latched on to one thing and one thing only.

“They’re kids.”

“Yep,” Lennox affirmed oh-so-helpfully as he watched the chaos unfolding.

Charlotte stared, caught between some form of mild hysteria and utter, gut-wrenching nausea.

Oh.

No, that might have been the withdrawal.

She excused herself from the hangar with little notice and heaved up the watery contents of her stomach around the corner. 


	3. Meetings and Greetings

“You need an MTI,” Charlotte surmised as she downed the offered Advil and water. No one would give her alcohol.

They’d migrated their conversation back to the command center. The humans stood on a balcony that put them as close to conversation height with the cybertronians as they could really hope for.

Lennox offered a helpless expression. “It’s a little more complicated than that...”

“We have no fliers among our numbers to teach our young Aerials,” Optimus interjected, “It was only after extensive discussion with Colonel Lennox that we decided to seek outside assistance.”

Optimus leaned as casually as a being of his stature could manage against the railing that absolutely must have been reinforced at some point for this explicit purpose. Charlotte gave him her undivided attention. It had nothing to do with the fact that she was perhaps just a tad wary of the massive mech.

None at all.

“But can’t you just,” Charlotte struggled to convey her limited understanding of their alien ability to remake themselves. She ended up wiggling her fingers in a vague motion and echoing the noise she’d heard earlier.

Epps smothered a chuckle.

Optimus stared at her, a consternated scowl on his faceplates. “I do not understand,” he cast an inquiring glance towards Lennox.

Charlotte looked between them.

“Transform,” Lennox offered as explanation for both their sakes. “And no, they can’t just transform into planes.”

“Ah,” Optimus regained control of the conversation with a sagely nod. “Our species has a variety of frame types – I have heard them compared to races or sub-species by our liaison – that allow for a vast array of capabilities and limitations between us. My troops are primarily ground-based in terms of alternate forms they can take on. At the start of the war, Megatron had convinced the entire city-state of Vos, the homeland of most of Cybertron’s aerials, to join his cause.”

Charlotte blinked and flicked her gaze to Lennox.

“Grounders turn into cars, flyers turn into planes, and most of the flyers joined the Decepticons.”

“That is the short of it, I suppose. Though there are rare instances where a mechanism may be able to support multiple alternate forms, an aerial alternate-mode among them, but I have not seen or heard of a triple-changer since the Exodus.”

Lennox shrugged, and the two humans nodded as though they understood.

“Ok, so I guess my other main question – I guess I understand that you didn’t have a… mech for this job – but you have the authority to pull any soldier from any branch of the military, out of discharge or retirement,” Charlotte gestured to herself, “Why me? Why not an actual MTI? I never instructed.”

“That is somewhat more difficult to explain,” Optimus acquiesced, “though I will try. You see, the Aerials are not military. While it is essential that they learn the intricacies of combat, with the hope that, someday, they may join our cause, they also need to learn the intricacies of life. And I’m afraid that is not something we are capable of providing them with.”

Charlotte could see where this was heading. Something uncomfortable writhed in her chest. “They need a mother,” she concluded.

Optimus smiled again, but it edged on bittersweet. “Unfortunately, as creations of Vector Sigma, they have no creators as they ought to have had.”

Charlotte looked to Lennox for translation.

“Big super-computer made them; no parents.”

Charlotte cast a strange look around at her company and, perhaps to draw away from the uncomfortable train of thought trying to lay tracks in her mind, asked, “How are cybertronians usually made if ‘being made by a super-computer’ is considered strange?”

Epps choked on his own spit. Lennox made an aborted motion to smash his head against the railing.

And Optimus looked frozen with a polite smile on his face. “I think, perhaps,” he said slowly, “that questions of that nature should be directed to our Chief Medical Officer, Ratchet.”

Charlotte managed to maintain a stalwart expression. “Cool beans; I’ll just add that to the ever-growing list of things I didn’t know I didn’t want to know.”

“Back to the matter at hand…” Optimus digressed, “I know you have not had much time to acclimate to everything that has been explained to you, but the sooner the Aerials begin training, the better for everyone.”

Charlotte felt a sharp smile tug at her lips. “Your mechs don’t know how to babysit, do they.”

“They are… ill-equipped to handle younglings.”

“Out of curiosity, what made you think I would be?” Charlotte squinted, curious, but perhaps suspicious was more accurate.

“During the vetting process of candidates, our psychologist, Rung, pointed out in your file that you had active carrier protocols.”

Charlotte felt a chill run down her spine and settle in a pit in her stomach. “And that means what, exactly?”

She saw Lennox furiously shaking his head out of the corner of her eye, but when she snapped around to him, he was suspiciously still. Epps had vanished altogether. When, Charlotte couldn’t recall.

“Why don’t we go over more of the specifics of the role,” Lennox offered as distraction.

Charlotte let it drop, and they moved on.

The Aerials needed a flight instructor, first and foremost. They needed someone who could coach them through the intricacies of flight and help them get familiarized with their frames. The medic could assist in that in a broader sense, and the combat specialist could teach them confidence in root-mode, as they called their bipedal states.

But a truck could not teach a plane to fly. It was, as Lennox tried to explain, akin to a track runner trying to teach someone pole vaulting without any experience. Not impossible, but there were better things for the Autobots to do, apparently, than learn the theory of flying.

So, someone had proposed, why not just have someone already familiar with flying teach them?

Charlotte supposed it wasn’t the worst idea.

But even if Charlotte had had experience as a Military Training Instructor, even that wouldn’t have prepared her for this. The Aerials weren’t just new recruits. Even new recruits had some military training, knew the rules of the base, knew how rank worked, and could follow a schedule.

The Aerials needed to be taught all that and more. Charlotte would need to parse out the unspoken rules of this hodge-podge military team, the Autobots, NEST, cybertronian culture, and then be able to teach it to _children_ who had little to no social experience outside of a military base.

“Hey, do I get a hat?” Charlotte interjected into the conversation, oblivious to what Optimus and Lennox had been discussing while she’d zoned out.

“A hat?” Lennox queried.

“Yeah, you know; the Smokey Hat,” she mimed the action of tugging a hat onto her head. “Air Force MTI’s have Smokey Hats. Have you never met an Air Force MTI? How have you never met an Air Force MTI?”

Lennox gave her an unreadable look. “… I’ll see what I can do.”

Charlotte smiled.

The medic, Ratchet, joined them at some point and tried to explain, in terms Charlotte could understand, cybertronian lifecycles and base physiology, but apparently a BSME was useless in the context of aliens. Even mechanical aliens. Here’s what she understood.

Cybertronians could be made one of several ways, the primary three being; the All-Spark (which was destroyed), Vector Sigma (the super-computer which was now under Decepticon control and also probably destroyed), and something called Sparking (which he refused to expound upon and made Lennox turn red in the face again).

The Aerials were created by Vector-Sigma, which Charlotte knew. ‘Creations’ of Vector Sigma were usually fully developed; however, something had stunted the Aerials’ growth, and they had to grow up the old-fashioned way. Which somehow also accounted for why, despite being created at the same time, they appeared to be at different developmental stages.

To avoid confusion, everyone just used developmental stages instead of actual ages, and the Aerials themselves were brought in to be introduced officially.

Oldest to youngest, they stood Silverbolt, Air Raid, Slingshot, Skydive, and Fireflight.

Silverbolt was almost an adult and acted like it. Charlotte pegged him at 15 years old.

Air Raid was timid but smart and curious. (13 years old)

Slingshot was a pistol, constantly trying to sneak away with the sole intent of finding fun and causing trouble. (9 years old)

Skydive was thin as a beanstalk, almost as tall as Slingshot, and had a penchant for following the troublemaker around like a shadow. (7 years old)

Fireflight was a pipsqueak, and Charlotte stood by her initial assessment that he was, at most, a 3-year-old. The tiny mechling also had trouble focusing and spent most of his time magnetized to Silverbolt’s back, which was apparently a very common thing for little cybertronians to do.

It was also, apparently, common for Aerials to be very large. Despite their status as children among cybertronians, the older Aerialbots were nearly the size of their ground-based brothers-in-arms.

And apparently the ability to transform was one of the first systems to develop, which meant all the Aerials could do so.

Charlotte still had mixed feelings about that.

Fireflight was a radio plane, the kind that Charlotte had never seen outside of a museum setting. He was 8 feet long, had 12 feet of wingspan, and could only fly for about an hour before getting tired. His propellers spluttered a lot, even when he was in root mode, and clicked against his wings whenever he was excited or nervous.

Charlotte’s reaction?

“… Fucking adorable.”

“Fugg’n!”

“No, don’t say that.”

Skydive was, again to Charlotte’s chagrinned adoration, a P-51 Mustang. The classic WWII airplane had once held the title of most feared craft in the air as well as the most capable. Now, however, it was a kayak amid speedboats. Skydive wasn’t too disappointed, though. He actually had his eyes set on a large recognizance drone when he did finally upgrade instead of a fighter jet like his brothers.

Upgrades was a tangential conversation held between her and Ratchet.

Slingshot had only just recently gone through his 2nd upgrade, meaning his systems could support thrusters, and had proudly folded down into a small jet. Short, sleek, stunted wings, and a single thruster, the F-16 was a strong and capable jet with a well-rounded range of uses in all branches of the military.

Air Raid was standard F-18. The predecessor of the F-22 in air superiority, the twin-engine jet was renowned for its versatility and reliability.

Silverbolt boasted an impressive F-14 Tomcat alternate-mode. A long-range interceptor and an air superiority fighter as well as a naval support craft, it was rigged for catapult launches and recoveries, but what set the Tomcat aside from other fighters was its variable wing geometry design. It could, in theory, go from a near-hover to edging in on the legendary SR-71’s renown speeds. And it was by far the most versatile and maneuverable of its weight class.

All that to say Charlotte was wicked jealous.

But that wasn’t the issue. Charlotte was familiar with their specific alt-modes, had flown enough planes, jets, and experimental tech that she wasn’t intimidated by theirs, and didn’t doubt her own versatility and ability to adapt to the situation.

Here was the deal, the issue, the main problemo.

Silverbolt was, as pointed out before, very tall. All the details and technicalities of his very interesting alien physiology aside, he sat 62 feet from nose to tail when in alt. mode.

In root mode, he was roughly 30 feet tall, standing level with Optimus Prime’s shoulder.

Air Raid was 20’ tall, Slingshot was 14’ tall, Skydive was 13’ tall, and Fireflight was 8’ tall.

It would, Charlotte concluded, make for a very interesting and challenging teaching experience. Between learning about cybertronians, aerials, kids, _cybertronian_ kids, _airplane_ kids, and learning how to _teach_ – because Charlotte was a pilot, not an instructor – she had her work cut out for her.

“So, you’ll do it?” Lennox asked when it was all said and done.

Charlotte scrubbed her face and tried to think of a cohesive answer. She looked up and found the oldest of the Aerials, Silverbolt, staring back. He shrunk in on himself upon finding her eyes but offered a hesitant smile nonetheless.

A rare, cool breeze drifted through the hangar. Charlotte breathed, tasted humidity and salt, and felt something in her chest ease enough to allow her to smile thinly back.

“Well, since you clearly so desperately need my help,” Charlotte winked at Silverbolt and turned to Lennox, “I suppose I can stay.”

“Really?! Because we could find someone else, I won’t pressure-”

“You insult me!” Charlotte pressed a hand to her chest. “You’ll find no one better than me.”

Lennox chuckled and shook his head. “I’ll have someone show you to the officer’s quarters. Welcome to the shit show, Captain Victory. We truly are lucky to have you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Slower chapter, mostly descriptions; plot will start picking up soon. Our reluctant hero has her work cut out for her, let me tell you.   
> I've loved your comments; they're very bolstering and I'm so happy you guys like Charlotte as much as I do. I created her like 3 years ago and started writing 2 years ago, so most of the plot is there, just gotta write the bits&pieces. Thanx fam. Much love from Faraday.


	4. Storm Fronts

Charlotte didn’t sleep well. She hardly ever did, and going cold-turkey in a time-zone across the world was not helping the situation. She found herself wandering the base with the night patrol. It was how she ended up finding an unexpected companion in the Autobot’s combat specialist, Ironhide.

She found him near the rocky shore, staring out at the ocean, though for all she knew, he could be doing a million different things than just enjoying the view.

In the absence of any distractions for herself, Charlotte opted for the view.

Not the ocean; she’d seen enough ocean that it wasn’t unique. But the mech… he was something else.

He glanced down at her inspection of him but didn’t say anything to deter her. It was something Charlotte hadn’t noticed before, but in the dark, the difference in intensity of his eyes – optics – was much more distinct. One was much brighter than the other, and the other, pale and dim. Moonlight barely outlined a thin path of dark metal that was at odds with the silver of the rest of his faceplates.

Charlotte felt a smile tug at the corner of her mouth.

What an odd thing to find in common with a giant, alien war-machine.

In the end, they talked about teaching methods and training regiments. Ironhide shared what insight he had into training Autobot recruits as well as whatever he had already gleaned from working with the Aerials thus far.

The topic encroached on the tight knot of unease in Charlotte’s chest, though, so she took a hard left.

“Hey,” she said as suddenly as the question came to mind, and she voiced it before she could regret it just yet, “what are carrier protocols?”

Ironhide made an inquiring noise, taken off-guard and forced to reorganize his thoughts. He looked down at her, arms crossed over his chest. “Well… I ain’t no medic, but carrier protocols are the stuff that, uh, make carriers… carriers… Why are you curious about this?”

“Optimus Prime said that one of the reasons they picked me for this job was because I had ‘active carrier protocols’.”

Ironhide stiffened. “Well… carrier protocols are, uh, like, hard-coded instincts that carriers have.”

“And what’s a carrier?” Charlotte tried for nonchalance and kicked a rock off the edge of the ledge. Unease pooled in her gut, but curiosity kept her stubbornly on this subject.

“Oh,” Ironhide muttered, but continued as if it was a common question. “Bit of a translation issue here, mostly ‘cause not all our femmes are carriers, and not all carriers are femmes; but I guess a carrier is comparable enough to a mother.”

Ironhide shrugged, oblivious to the sudden stillness of his conversation companion.

Unease bubbled into acidic dread.

“The Protocols ain’t active until a bot has actually carried, but when they do, they’re ain’t a power on any world we’ve come across that can cross ‘em and come out in one piece. I once seen a carrier kill an entire contingent of ‘con mercs that had kidnapped his creation; 27 frames in this mech’s wake and he just grabbed his bitlet, hijacked a ship, and flew off.”

Charlotte felt her breath speeding up with every word, mind racing along on a tangent as the Autobot kept talking and kept talking and-

“So, I mean, I get why Optimus might’a picked a femme of your race for the job ‘cause humans got similar protocols – at least, that’s what Ratchet says – even if they ain’t got visible code… but you ain’t had younglings, so I don’t know why Optimus’d say you got active ones-”

Charlotte’s world whited out.

…

“So? What do you think?”

Humans and Autobots alike had gathered for the end-of-day review, the highlight, unsurprisingly, the newest addition to the team. Charlotte’s file and image were plastered up on the command room’s console.

Capt. Charlotte Joanne Victory, USAF (discharged with honors), (32 yr)  
Education: Georgia Institute of Technology, dual majored in mechanical engineering and avionics engineering, minor in theoretical physics  
Marital Status: Divorced

Charlotte had hard features, a strong jaw and thick nose and a heavy brow line. Dirty red hair stuck out in short, choppy tufts, the result of a self-inflicted haircut that she’d apparently never bothered to have corrected since she’d donned a grown-out version of it that day.

Arguably, the most prominent feature of Charlotte was the jagged scar running from the brow of her left eye, down her cheek, and through her lip. The result of her crash in Mission City, the injury left her eye blind and pale. Scar tissue pulled her mouth into a perpetual facsimile of a smirk.

Along with a basic history, an extensive military record, both impressive and diverse, and several medical records, Charlotte’s file held two psychological evaluations. One had been taken shortly after her final discharge, after Mission City, and the other had been taken several years previous, at some point before a promotion and relocation.

After college, she’d worked with a small aerospace components manufacturer while she waited for her husband of 2 years, Adam Jones, to finish his masters.

For reasons that no record deigned to expound upon, Charlotte and Adam unofficially separated 6 years after the start of their marriage. Charlotte enlisting in the Air Force at the age of 24.

She served for several years, hopping from different divisions and rising in rank until she landed with an impressive service background in an R&D department that specialized in early prototype flight technology. She stayed there for several more years, and when she turned 30, was promoted once more to Captain and requested back as a pilot and squad leader by a homeland defense division.

The earlier psychological record was short, stating that Charlotte was most uniquely suited to her position and loved her work. She thrived on challenge and adversity, led with confidence, respected her colleagues like family, and apart from a mild superiority-complex, there was nothing that indicated Charlotte would be anything less than perfect for the promotion.

Then things took a turn.

A year after her promotion, Mission City happened.

Medical records and mission debriefs were redacted to almost nothing. Charlotte was grounded for her injuries and honorably discharged for reasons that were also blacked out. She lost her wingman, her eye, her career, and her purpose in what was officially stamped as a ‘training accident’.

The latter psych record went deep into Charlotte’s temperamental emotional and mental state, stating how they were unsure how she would reintegrate to civilian life, how she clammed up, shut down, and became bitter and closed off. The only insight Charlotte had offered willingly to the psychologist was ‘everything has been taken from me [Charlotte], and someday, I will take it back’.

The divorce papers were the last thing in her file, submitted almost a year ago but finalized just a few weeks ago.

“Well?” Lennox scratched his chin and made a mental note to shave the next day.

“She is,” Optimus took the initiative, “not exactly what I imagined.”

“Yeah,” Jazz swung his peds up on the table.

Prowl pushed them off.

“I thought Rung said this femme was a carrier,” the TiC continued unfazed, moving to prop his peds on Prowls chair legs instead, where the SiC couldn’t reach.

“Ah,” the small, orange mech leaned forward to be seen around Ratchet. “I said she has _protocols_ , not that she is a carrier.”

Ratchet gave an exasperated roll of his helm. “Regardless, she shows none of it. How you came to that conclusion is beyond me.”

“Which is why I am the psychologist and you are the medic,” Rung muttered, adjusting his glasses with a thin digit.

“What’s that supposed to mean?!” Ratchet snapped.

“Aw, Ratch,” Jazz tried to interject, “I’m sure didn’t mean nothing by it.”

“Oh he most certainly did!” Ratchet countered. “You wanna say something, you sorry excuse for a medical professional?”

“Name-calling is hardly a mark of any kind of professional,” the psychologist said without regarding the other. His voice stayed steady, bordering on a whisper.

It was common knowledge that Rung and Ratchet had a long and disputed history together. Despite being the base’s only doctors, they held little to no respect for one another. Ratchet worked in the tangible, the extrapolatable, and the fixable. Rung worked decidedly in matters more abstract. Quarrels such as this one often resulted in loud and unproductive arguments and, ultimately, in an absolutely frigid atmosphere separating the halls between their respective domains and a week of unpleasant check-ups.

“Everyone, please,” Optimus interjected, voice never rising beyond a stern tenor yet earned him the undivided attention of everyone within earshot.

Ratchet muttered something Lennox didn’t catch, and Rung shot the mech an absolutely scathing look.

Jazz flicked a datapad stylus at the medic, and Ratchet turned his wrath on the spy.

Optimus continued before the situation could escalate, pointedly ignoring the tension.

“Regardless of history, I believe the question posed by the Colonel was aimed more towards present-day impression.”

“She was ill outside the Aerials’ hangar,” Ratchet offered immediately, “and shows other signs of alcohol poisoning and withdrawal, she does not maintain an acceptable standard of cleanliness required for humans to remain healthy, and it is unlikely that those habits don’t bleed over into other aspects of her life. Hardly the most impressive of first impressions.”

“She is strong willed,” Rung countered, “but I challenge you to name an Autobot or NEST soldier who is not.”

“That’s just it, though, ain’t it?” Jazz interjected. “We didn’t want to hire another soldier.”

Prowl nodded in concession. “The goal was to acquire a teacher and mentor for our young Aerials. While Captain Victory may be a skilled pilot and adept soldier, she is not, at first glance, what I would seek in a Guardian.”

“And Prowl hasn’t even interacted with her,” Ratchet waved a servo.

“I say, at the very least,” Rung interrupted before Ratchet could set off on another tirade, “we give her more time to interact with the Aerials. One day is hardly enough time to form an accurate analysis of a person.”

“I agree,” Optimus nodded sagely.

“How long of a trial period do you think you need, OP?” Lennox spoke up.

Optimus looked to his officers.

Ratchet mused, Rung canted his helm in consideration, Jazz looked to Prowl, and Prowl churned through the data until it formed coherent numbers.

“Two months at minimum,” the tactician provided.

“Two months, then.” Optimus trusted his officers’ judgement implicitly.

“Case of Vosnian high grade says she quits at one month,” Jazz blurted.

Prowl snapped his helm around to glare while Ratchet gaped. “Where’d you get Vosnian high grade?!”

“Trade secret, my mech,” Jazz winked. “Deal?”

“Don’t you dare,” Prowl turned his glare on the medic.

“Two vials of med-grade anesthetic says she quits at two weeks,” Ratchet pointedly ignored Prowl.

“A jar of Prime Elixir,” Rung added to the surprise of all, “says she’ll fight you all to stay when you inevitably try to kick her off base.”

“Prime-” Ratchet choked off in surprise.

“A whole fragging _jar_?!” Jazz gaped.

Optimus rubbed his helm to stave off the growing ache. Prowl got up and left.

Lennox turned to Epps as the three mechs shook servos on their bets. “I give you,” he gestured to the scene, “the protectors of the human race.”

Epps made a poor attempt to stifle his chuckle.

…

Ironhide resumed his patrol after Charlotte brought their conversation to an abrupt end. The mech cast a long, hard look as he retreated.

Charlotte remained, staring out at the rocky coastline and trying to sort her head. It had been a long time since she’d bothered with the exercise, but she found herself sitting on the ground, legs crossed and hands resting on her knees palms up.

Her heart raced, pounding a traitorous beat against her ribcage. Her breathes were ragged, like they hadn’t been in years, thick and wet with the threat of emotions she hadn’t _allowed_ herself to feel in years.

She breathed in and tasted salt on the wind. She listened and heard the crash of waves on the shore, the wind in the trees, and the hum of generators farther behind her. She peered out at the horizon and found stars in number and clarity that she’d only ever been graced with during late night, high-altitude flights.

She let the though bring her back to her earliest days in the Air Force and those first few, utterly exhilarating, wonderous flights. She’d learned to navigate currents and drafts. She reveled in the strength of the machine that both yielded to and protected her. Charlotte Joanne Victory hadn’t known it until she had been cruising at 60 thousand feet that she had been born to fly.

All the baggage of her marriage, a union that she now realized had been the result of poor foresight, fell away when she was in the air. All the trauma… the trauma clung like a parasite, eating away at her and corrupting every good thing she tried to hold close to her. But in the sky, it felt a little less like a constrictor and more like a caress.

Flying had been the only thing capable of consoling her in the aftermath of everything that had happened, the only thing that offered solace and a sense of things being bigger than her.

Returning home between tours had been as jarring at the commercial plane touching down on the tarmac – amateur pilots – and Charlotte had never been surprised at the lack of a greeting party in the terminal.

Neither, she told herself, had the divorce papers she’d found on the counter when she got home after a particularly long service term, but that had stung more than it had any right to. She left them unsigned when she left for her next and final, though she would not have known that until later, term a few months later.

She was a captain, in charge of her own team, and for a year, it had been everything she’d ever wanted; purpose, friends close enough to call family, a cause, and at the end of each day, she could fly and remember and forget. She became strong and fearless and smart, a master of her chosen place.

It had, as everything else in her life, died a sudden and incomprehensible death.

The wind picking up brought Charlotte back to the present, and she looked up to find a storm front on the horizon. Star vanished in vast swathes, and the waved crashed against the rocks with increasing vigor. Her heart had not slowed, her thoughts had not sorted themselves, and the knot in her chest only constricted further.

Never before had Charlotte turned down a challenge.

College was nothing. She laughed as she received her degree; dual majors and a minor. She’d waltzed into the manufacturer she wanted to work for, handed them her resume alongside every design flaw she’d ever found in their commercial parts, and got hired the next day. She strode down the aisle like she’d been a soldier leading a charge, as if she were wearing armor instead of lace, and stepped into marriage without any qualms.

Then, where she had once been indominable and unshakable, she started failing.

Was that it?

Did she fear a repeat of her first, real failure…

No, that wasn’t why, _now_ , she was…

Charlotte released a harsh breath and smothered the bitterness rising in her throat. In one sharp movement, she stood, did an about-face, and set off towards the officer’s quarters. Tonight wasn’t the night she would be braving a storm-front.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter fought me, dad had surgery, I got sick... so this is what it is, kind of another interim scene but crucial to development. More to come. Stay safe, stay healthy. Love from Faraday.


	5. Day 1

Day one started with the military day, which is to say too early and with a lot of yelling.

Now, boot camp might have been close to 15 years ago for her, but Charlotte _thought_ the yelling had usually been drill sergeants, not the cadets.

Fully prepared to wake up her new students with pots and pans as she had been so rudely awakened to for several months of her life, she was more than a little dismayed and confused as to why she was greeted in their hangar with raucous laughter and shouting.

Despite Silverbolt’s obvious attempts at corralling his younger siblings, and Air Raid’s valiant but ultimately useless help, Slingshot evaded his brothers with the proficiency of a tried professional. Slingshot ducked Silverbolt’s outstretched hand, used a leg to swing himself away from Air Raid’s, and leapt over Skydive with a flourished kick that sent the smaller mech stumbling into the eldest two bothers.

Fireflight clapped and cheered from a mesh-filled corner of the room.

Slingshot chortled as he danced away from the mess he’d created.

It was then that he noticed their company.

“Hey look! It’s Char-little!”

Charlotte recoiled in confusion and offense. “Char _lotte_.”

Slingshot giggled. “But there’s not ‘a-lot’ of you; there’s ‘a-little’ of you!” He pinched his fingers together and squinted down at her.

“Charlittle! Charlittle!” Skydive chanted and ran circles around his fallen brothers.

Charlotte felt her mouth pull into a thin line. “My name is Captain Charlotte Victory. You will refer to me as Captain or Captain Victory, am I understood.”

The small mech recoiled like someone had just doused him in cold water. “Uh…”

Silverbolt offered what might have been a cough and lifted a tentative servo. The effect of submissive cadet was somewhat ruined by the fact that he was sprawled on the floor. “Um, miss-uh, sorry; Captain Victory?”

“Speak up, kid.”

“Well, it’s just that we’ve never had a proper-uh… teacher before,” he explained as he extricated himself from the 3-plane pileup, “… like a commander or anything. And we’ve never had training-well, Ironhide tried training us but h-he’s never – and I’m quoting him – he’s never had patience for younglings and would rather leave us in a bunker ‘til we’re older.”

“Hmm,” Charlotte frowned and made a mental note to make an actual note to talk to the combat specialist again if the opportunity arose. “Well, unfortunately for you, I’m not a teacher either.”

Silverbolt looked dismayed.

“But,” Charlotte shrugged, “I’ve got patience to spare when it comes to insubordinate, untrained fuc-”

She bit her tongue when she remembered who, exactly, she was talking to.

“Shitlings.” Fuck, that wasn’t any better. She smothered her mistake behind a cough.

Slingshot canted his head and had that wide-eyed, curious look that children often got before they asked questions adults would rather not answer.

Charlotte clapped her hands before he could voice it. “Who wants to do some warm-ups and go through some team-building exercises?! You? Perfect, let’s go.”

She turned heel and marched back out onto the tarmac before she got a proper answer. Whether or not, and how, they followed was their first test of the day.

After her midnight discussion with Ironhide and her subsequent avoidance of her deep-rooted emotional issues, Charlotte had had plenty of time to come up with how she was going to handle today. It had taken a lot of complicated thought and a 3 am trip to the Autobot’s medbay that turned into a several hours long discussion on basic Cybertronian physiology with Ratchet before Charlotte had been even remotely ready to start creating a battle plan. But the end results were worth it, or so she hoped they would be.

Armed with everything from standard intimidation tactics and unrealistically cruel punishment threats to more team-building and skill-evaluation activities, she was ready for anything these alien kids could throw at her.

Confirming that the Aerials were indeed following her, albeit in the most unorganized and awkward line they could manage, Charlotte led the mechlings to an unused strip of tarmac behind their hangar. Lennox had told her that morning that it had been set aside for the Aerials after an incident on the main runway involving a cargo carrier that no one wanted to expound upon.

Regardless of why and how, it would suit their purposes well enough.

Charlotte turned on her heel again at the edge of the cracked and overgrown runway. The Aerials, who had been following much too close, jolted to a stop at her sudden about-face. The stared wide-eyed at her.

“I’m told you already know how to get and stay airborne,” she began, hands shoved in the pockets of her fatigues. She’d found a spare set in her quarters, probably courtesy of Lennox or whatever underling he’d assigned to the task.

“Yes, ma’am,” Silverbolt nodded, and the others echoed. Fireflight spouted gibberish, but the sentiment was there.

“And you’ve done laps before.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I want to see it. Thirty laps around the island.” Charlotte had, with Ratchet’s advice, determined to be an adequate warm-up for mechs of their frame-type and developmental stage.

Say what her previous commanders might have about her, but Charlotte was never slow to adapt. She’d never instructed cadets, but she’d commanded combat units and led ground teams for much of her military career. Step 1 of building a team was always, always, finding limits and capabilities.

Ratchet and Ironhide had given her a framework of what was a good gauge of limits and capabilities of Cybertronians, but they had little insight into the specifics of the Aerials.

That was where they’d start.

“Mis- Captain Victory,” Silverbolt raised his hand again. “Fireflight can’t do thirty laps.”

Charlotte blinked. The little mech in question peered at her from over Silverbolt’s wings. He chirped and smiled at her.

“As a team,” Charlotte began slowly, working through the thoughts as they formed, “you are only as strong as your weakest member. Fireflight cannot fly thirty laps… on his own. So, what should you do?”

Silverbolt hesitated and glanced at Air Raid.

“Ironhide said that we needed to do the laps on our own,” Air Raid piped up, “or else it’s cheating.”

Charlotte wrinkled her nose. “Ironhide isn’t your instructor, is he?”

Hesitation, then a round of head shakes.

“No,” Charlotte confirmed. “I am. And as your instructor, I decide what is cheating and what is not, right?”

Less hesitant nods.

“Right, and while there will be times when you will need to be able to operate alone, as a team, there will be more times when you must be able to trust one another and carry each other through a mission.”

That might have gone a little over their heads if the confused dart of optics was anything to go by.

Charlotte huffed. “Whatever. Fireflight flies as far as he can, then Silverbolt and Air Raid can take turns carrying him.”

“What?! But that’s not fair!” Slingshot blurted.

“Thank you for adding yourself to that rotation, Slingshot,” Charlotte countered just as quickly.

The little mech started to squawk in protest.

“Unless you’d like to just carry him for the whole 30 laps.”

Slingshot snapped his mouth shut.

For all his initial muttered complaints, Slingshot took off with all the enthusiasm of every first-time flyer Charlotte had ever known. And wasn’t that a sight the she marveled in 5 times over.

Their transformations were far from smooth, not like Charlotte had witnessed with the silver Porsche just that morning, but there was something distinctly wonderful about their clumsy climbs into the sky. They sounded alive in ways Charlotte couldn’t compare to any other jet she’d ever encountered before, even without the whoops and shouts of glee that followed the bellow and thrum of heavy engines.

They quickly vanished from sight, and Charlotte could track them by sound alone.

Air Raid and Slingshot completed their first lap, Skydive not far behind them. Silverbolt lagged with Fireflight while shouting at the others to slow down. Air Raid slowed to match. Skydive hesitated but followed Slingshot when the other disregarded the command.

Gone again, Charlotte made mental notes of the interaction.

Lap two came and went, Slingshot leading the pack, and the next several laps passed in similar fashion.

Fireflight exhausted himself partway through lap ten, and Silverbolt had the little mech on his wings the next time they came through. What struck Charlotte as odd, however, was when Slingshot started lagging as well. Air Raid passed him with worrying whine in his own engine, and Slingshot’s engine grumbled when he put on a burst of speed to catch up.

For the next few laps, Charlotte watched Slingshot.

It sounded, to her trained ear, like he was carrying too much weight. She’d heard it before when one of her oversea teams had to make a hasty evac and overloaded a carrier, grumbling and straining engine, too much power to the thrusters than would normally be required to lift the jet.

But that didn’t make sense. None of the Aerials had payloads.

Air Raid, coming in for his 15th lap, sounded much the same, though to less of a degree. However, his engine also had a whine to it, like a car in too low of a gear for the speeds it was going.

Recalling the brief mention Ratchet had made about frame-type limitations, Charlotte compared what she knew. Slingshot’s F-16 alt weighed almost 20000 lbs, had a max speed of 1400 mph, and a ceiling of 50000. The F-18 weighed 23000 lbs, maxed its speeds around 1200 mph, and had a similar ceiling.

Why was Slingshot in a heavier alt?

Charlotte hummed and clicked her jaw.

“Now that’s an alarm clock.”

Charlotte winced at the voice to her left and turned to find Lennox, dual-wielding cups of coffee.

“You make a habit of hiding in blind spots?” she jabbed.

He had the courtesy to look mildly ashamed and held out one of the cups of coffee. “Only when I bring peace offerings.”

“Accepted,” Charlotte nodded and took the cup. It was just shy of lukewarm, and she downed it in a few large gulps and shoved the cup in her pocket.

“So,” Lennox sipped his own cup and gestured to Skydive as he streaked past, “how’s it going?”

“I have more questions than answers every time they do something.”

“That’s a pretty normal day,” Lennox agreed, “and I’ve been with these guys almost 2 years. Anything I can help with?”

Charlotte waited a moment as Silverbolt thundered past.

“How do they pick their alternate modes?” she posed.

“Shit,” Lennox laughed. “That’s a Ratchet question, right off the bat. I mean, I know a lot of it is frame type and stuff, but I think the rest is just personal preference.”

“Truck can’t be a plane; I got it,” Charlotte watched Air Raid and Skydive pacing each other. “But specific models… Maybe it isn’t such an issue with automobiles, but there’s such a drastic difference in the capabilities and ranges of jets, I can’t imagine that they’d find a good fit based on preference alone.”

“I guess,” Lennox shrugged. “Why do you ask?”

“It’s like,” Charlotte wrinkled her nose, “the F-16 is too big for him, too heavy, and he’s putting more energy into moving than he’s getting out. And Air Raid’s isn’t quite right either.”

Lennox hummed curiously and watched the skies as well. “I mean, I guess it’s possible. I’ve known a couple mechs who went through a few alts before settling on one. I always thought it was preference, but I never asked either.”

“They just change whenever they want?” Charlotte inquired.

Fireflight swooped past on his own, having regained some energy after riding around with Air Raid for a while.

“We’ve got a detailed data-base of a bunch of alt specs for them and new mecha to choose from,” the colonel explained. “In the earlier days, we had actual cars and planes shipped over for them to scan, but that wasn’t a long-term, effective solution.”

A thunderous roar preceded the rapid decent of Slingshot as he transformed to hover over the tarmac. “CHARLITTLE, I’M TIRED!”

“THAT WAS ONLY LAP 22, YOU LITTLE IMP. GET YOUR ASS – shit ass – **BUTT** BACK IN THE AIR!”

The little mech sagged, wings drooping in a display that Charlotte would not, in that moment or any other, admit to being too cute for the kid’s own good. But after another moment of petulant dramatics, he transformed and took off again.

“I have no idea what lap they’re on,” Charlotte admitted after he’d gone.

Lennox snorted some coffee.

“So, what would I have to do to get access to this data-base of yours?”

Only after he’d wiped his face on his sleeve and managed to regain some semblance of composure, could Lennox answer. “I’ll get you a connection. What are you thinking?”

Charlotte could hear Skydive calling her name even before he rounded the last corner, rattling on about how Slingshot was hiding on the far side of the island instead of doing laps.

“I think you let children loose in a candy store before they knew what was good for them,” she answered cryptically before marching off to find the wayward Aerial, leaving Lennox to finish his cold coffee by himself.

…

Slingshot didn’t make things easy. For someone as large as he was, the kid was surprisingly good at hide and seek. Of course, once he thought they were playing a game, Skydive wanted to play too. It took 3 hours and the combined efforts of Charlotte, Silverbolt, Air Raid, and ultimately Jazz to find the missing kids.

Fireflight was no help, but he at least stayed with Silverbolt.

Jazz, who Charlotte realized in later was the silver Porsche she’d been ogling that morning, took the kids for ‘noon fuel’.

Lunch.

And that was when Charlotte’s stomach reminded her that she didn’t have dinner or breakfast and was still operating on western time and 2 hours of sleep.

A sketchy lunch, two more cups of coffee, and a 17 minute power nap later, Charlotte found herself back at the Aerials’ runway with a datapad filled with specs of every US and US-allied fighter jet ever designed or produced while the Aerials did some team building exercises.

She’d challenged them to cross from one end of the runway to the other without flying and without their feet touching the ground. No other rules were laid out. Be creative. Work together. Blah, blah, blah.

She’d check in on them in an hour.

Silverbolt and Air Raid left to go find supplies for some convoluted project or another. Slingshot and Skydive sat off to one side doing gymnastics. Fireflight was taking a nap under a tree. And Charlotte was refreshing her memory on specifications and capabilities of late-WWII and modern age fighter jets.

There were some prototype jets, ones Charlotte recalled seeing tech for in the R&D department she worked with, that drew her interest, but ultimately, she decided to pursue what she knew best. F-series fighters were reliable and familiar, and it didn’t take long for Charlotte to determine that Air Raid would be better suited in the F-16 than Slingshot was. It was lighter and faster, like his frame, than his current F-18.

But that left the issue of Slingshot.

While he could potentially handle the speed, the weight of the F-16 hindered him, whether he wanted to admit it or not.

(He did not, when asked, admit it.)

Something small but strong, reliable, familiar…

Charlotte flipped through specs as fast as they would load; too big, too heavy, too fast, wingspan was longer than the little mech was tall.

Then she found it.

“Charlotte, look, look!” Slingshot called.

Charlotte looked up.

He and Skydive had hooked their feet together and were walking on their hands across the runway. Their arms and legs threatened to buckle every other step, and Skydive’s incessant giggling nearly toppled them whenever they regained balance, but damn…

“See! No peds!” Skydive shouted.

A laugh bubbled up and out of her throat before Charlotte could stop it. “I see. Very inventive.”

As she watched, the entwined mechs overtook Silverbolt and Air Raid. The older brothers had gone with the classic strategy of shuffling around with a tarp under them, trying to coordinate every step so that the sheet moved with them.

Upon seeing their younger brothers encroaching, they tried to move faster.

The race ended halfway down the runway when Air Raid tripped on the tarp and Skydive fell over in a fit of giggles, taking Slingshot with him.

Charlotte thought, for a brief moment, that she felt a smile tug at her lips. It didn’t hurt so much today.

…

.

.

.

_Tile floor, a stained bathtub._

_Blood._

_So much blood. Why was there so much blood?!_

_Not again. Please, not again._

…

Charlotte woke with bile in her throat and heaved into the waste bucket beside her bunk until her stomach was empty.

God, it was so empty.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some good ol' fashioned Bonding Time. Loved this chappy.
> 
> So i got some art but can't figure out how to post it on AO3. Anybody got a how-to? Otherwise i'ma just drop it in tumblr and make you guys jump over there. It's not spectacular, but it'll at least give ya ideas of what i'm working with here.


End file.
